One of our agencies was named Interactive Agency of the Year today and another as the runner-up. That's a good thing.
The question is why?
For the most part 'of the year' awards are a measure of momentum. A good run of new business and higher profile campaigns from September through Novmember helps a lot as it puts you front and center in the judging season. In fact those three months are probably worth double the identical performance in the quarter from January to March.
The most important thing to realise if you win is that expectations of your ability to deliver grow and it's really easy to slip from the top of the mountain. Also your staff become targets for your competitors so you have to do everything humanly possible to retain them.
In many ways being average is easier but if you were forced to choose.............
Showing posts with label The world we work in. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The world we work in. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The launch of the new IAB web site
The IAB was kind enough to publish this today:
Despite the sweaty palms and the pacing up and down, it’s a pleasure to be here in the delivery room to witness the birth of the IAB’s new Web site. Randy will make for a wonderful father and we should look forward to buying him a cigar to celebrate. However wherever we encounter joy, fear is never far away. I rather wonder though if it is not being born into a difficult world, one in which it, like other non-commerce web sites might be increasingly seen as an anachronism in the wider world of interactive consumer communications.
It’s a mission thing. The IAB seeks to assist our craft, and historically at least its mission has been‘to organize the industry to set standards and guidelines that make interactive an easier medium for agencies and marketers to buy and capture value.’
The impending challenge arises from the very concept of seeking rules, standards and conventions in a world which only exists because smart folks called Berners-Lee (WWW GUI), Bezos (Amazon), Yang (Yahoo!), Whitman (EBay), Brin (Google), Newmark (Craigslist), Ferber (Ad.com), Friis (Joost) and Zuckerberg (Facebook) among many others showed a total disregard for rules, standards and conventions in creating the most powerful communications platforms of our generation. Their mission was in so many ways similar to the IAB’s but they chose to represent the needs of a very different constituency, they organized the channel to make interactive an easier medium for consumers , developers and sellers to use and capture value.
In doing this they proceeded without regard to our business models and took a bet on the possibility that revenue would accrue as a consequence of usage and that said revenue could come from our customers and their consumers in some unspecified way other than a general sense of convenience and usefulness.
The result has been a significant challenge to the hegemony of many of our businesses and why should we be surprised because it’s not just agencies and publishers that have felt the sting of the new. New businesses everywhere have been created by the Internet and its applications that share some key characteristics that their forebears have difficulty in replicating. It’s rather like asking someone for driving directions and getting the answer, “I wouldn’t start from here.”
The key characteristics are low cost bases allowed by minimal production and distribution infrastructure, the creation of non-physical goods and services and the propagation of advertising inventory at something approaching zero marginal cost. Contrast that with the organization of TV networks, newspaper publishers, ad agency networks, the phone companies and Yellow Pages and for that matter the United States Postal Service itself.
Part of our challenge is that we as a collective have tried to bend the interactive space to our will principally by attempting to apply familiar paradigms to a new and unfamiliar space. We have even tried hard to apply our language in ways that don’t recognize the real nature of the beast. Of all these references the most common and misplaced is our insistence on referring to the web as a medium (and by turn a line item on a media plan) when at the very least it is a channel and by any reasonable analysis it is, prosaically, a platform and, perhaps more colorfully, a parallel universe.
The notion of a parallel universe is easily explained when we try and think of any human activity beyond the strictly biological that cannot be replicated online through the facility of the Internet protocol. To save you pondering that for too long restrict it to the functions of marketing communications. All of advertising, direct marketing, sales, promotions, sponsorship, PR, cause marketing, event marketing and consumer research thrive in this environment which in itself warns against a mindset that seeks to find narrow and, therefore, controllable definitions that only fits the language of media planner and publisher.
Back to the role of the IAB. We did not and will not gain control of how many characters are allowable in a search listing, we won’t and can’t gain control of applications developed for the increasingly open platforms of Facebook and Myspace. Google and Joost will make their own minds up about ad formats for Youtube and IPTV. Even ABC developed its own ad model and format for its full episode player. For everything we know about ads do we really understand applications?
This implies a triumph of innovation over regulation and through hooded and trepidatious eye-lids a triumph of chaos over standards. It further implies, assuming an irreversible tide, that what we really need is a combination of imagination and production efficiency that allows marketers, their agencies and publishers to develop truly valuable (and thereby compelling) communication applications that create value through the dual ability to increase the potential of changing hearts and minds and simultaneously reducing the costs of goods sold.
In this last point lies what may be the future of the IAB. In the channel or universe suggested here the key challenge for marketers is developing the measures of effectiveness and the understanding of the formats and processes that drive that effect. To be clear this is the measure of marketing’s effect on metrics like awareness and attitudes rather than the internal measures of media like reach and frequency and ways of counting. It’s not that these don’t have importance rather that they are not in and off themselves a reason for being.
The IAB stands at the threshold of a tremendous opportunity and possibly of a new mission:
“To assist brand owners, their agencies, content owners and distributors in understanding and measuring the effect of communications delivered through addressable platforms and to monitor and report on user interaction with evolving communication models.”
We have the community to achieve this, yet so far it’s close but no cigar.
Despite the sweaty palms and the pacing up and down, it’s a pleasure to be here in the delivery room to witness the birth of the IAB’s new Web site. Randy will make for a wonderful father and we should look forward to buying him a cigar to celebrate. However wherever we encounter joy, fear is never far away. I rather wonder though if it is not being born into a difficult world, one in which it, like other non-commerce web sites might be increasingly seen as an anachronism in the wider world of interactive consumer communications.
It’s a mission thing. The IAB seeks to assist our craft, and historically at least its mission has been‘to organize the industry to set standards and guidelines that make interactive an easier medium for agencies and marketers to buy and capture value.’
The impending challenge arises from the very concept of seeking rules, standards and conventions in a world which only exists because smart folks called Berners-Lee (WWW GUI), Bezos (Amazon), Yang (Yahoo!), Whitman (EBay), Brin (Google), Newmark (Craigslist), Ferber (Ad.com), Friis (Joost) and Zuckerberg (Facebook) among many others showed a total disregard for rules, standards and conventions in creating the most powerful communications platforms of our generation. Their mission was in so many ways similar to the IAB’s but they chose to represent the needs of a very different constituency, they organized the channel to make interactive an easier medium for consumers , developers and sellers to use and capture value.
In doing this they proceeded without regard to our business models and took a bet on the possibility that revenue would accrue as a consequence of usage and that said revenue could come from our customers and their consumers in some unspecified way other than a general sense of convenience and usefulness.
The result has been a significant challenge to the hegemony of many of our businesses and why should we be surprised because it’s not just agencies and publishers that have felt the sting of the new. New businesses everywhere have been created by the Internet and its applications that share some key characteristics that their forebears have difficulty in replicating. It’s rather like asking someone for driving directions and getting the answer, “I wouldn’t start from here.”
The key characteristics are low cost bases allowed by minimal production and distribution infrastructure, the creation of non-physical goods and services and the propagation of advertising inventory at something approaching zero marginal cost. Contrast that with the organization of TV networks, newspaper publishers, ad agency networks, the phone companies and Yellow Pages and for that matter the United States Postal Service itself.
Part of our challenge is that we as a collective have tried to bend the interactive space to our will principally by attempting to apply familiar paradigms to a new and unfamiliar space. We have even tried hard to apply our language in ways that don’t recognize the real nature of the beast. Of all these references the most common and misplaced is our insistence on referring to the web as a medium (and by turn a line item on a media plan) when at the very least it is a channel and by any reasonable analysis it is, prosaically, a platform and, perhaps more colorfully, a parallel universe.
The notion of a parallel universe is easily explained when we try and think of any human activity beyond the strictly biological that cannot be replicated online through the facility of the Internet protocol. To save you pondering that for too long restrict it to the functions of marketing communications. All of advertising, direct marketing, sales, promotions, sponsorship, PR, cause marketing, event marketing and consumer research thrive in this environment which in itself warns against a mindset that seeks to find narrow and, therefore, controllable definitions that only fits the language of media planner and publisher.
Back to the role of the IAB. We did not and will not gain control of how many characters are allowable in a search listing, we won’t and can’t gain control of applications developed for the increasingly open platforms of Facebook and Myspace. Google and Joost will make their own minds up about ad formats for Youtube and IPTV. Even ABC developed its own ad model and format for its full episode player. For everything we know about ads do we really understand applications?
This implies a triumph of innovation over regulation and through hooded and trepidatious eye-lids a triumph of chaos over standards. It further implies, assuming an irreversible tide, that what we really need is a combination of imagination and production efficiency that allows marketers, their agencies and publishers to develop truly valuable (and thereby compelling) communication applications that create value through the dual ability to increase the potential of changing hearts and minds and simultaneously reducing the costs of goods sold.
In this last point lies what may be the future of the IAB. In the channel or universe suggested here the key challenge for marketers is developing the measures of effectiveness and the understanding of the formats and processes that drive that effect. To be clear this is the measure of marketing’s effect on metrics like awareness and attitudes rather than the internal measures of media like reach and frequency and ways of counting. It’s not that these don’t have importance rather that they are not in and off themselves a reason for being.
The IAB stands at the threshold of a tremendous opportunity and possibly of a new mission:
“To assist brand owners, their agencies, content owners and distributors in understanding and measuring the effect of communications delivered through addressable platforms and to monitor and report on user interaction with evolving communication models.”
We have the community to achieve this, yet so far it’s close but no cigar.
Teenage sex and mobile marketing; 1967 and all that
The summer of love was the summer of liberation when it became commonplace to do what you had only talked about previously. 2008 just might be the year when the same is true of mobile marketing and advertising.
So far the category has been held back by the triple play of limited bandwidth, ludicrous data pricing and handsets that just were not up to the job. 2008 will see a continued decline in cost and , among other things, the arrival of the 3G I Phone.
This combination of events finally creates the context that makes markets. Critically the device means that messaging and content can evolve in such a way that stories can be told within compelling content wrappers and these stories can be enhanced by the unique place based interactions that mobility allows.
Naturally all this comes with a warning. Firstly, the best looking kids get laid first, not everything has the charm of the I Phone. Second, it behoves us to remember that just because we can does not mean we should and that a combination of abstinence and protection is never a bad idea.
So far the category has been held back by the triple play of limited bandwidth, ludicrous data pricing and handsets that just were not up to the job. 2008 will see a continued decline in cost and , among other things, the arrival of the 3G I Phone.
This combination of events finally creates the context that makes markets. Critically the device means that messaging and content can evolve in such a way that stories can be told within compelling content wrappers and these stories can be enhanced by the unique place based interactions that mobility allows.
Naturally all this comes with a warning. Firstly, the best looking kids get laid first, not everything has the charm of the I Phone. Second, it behoves us to remember that just because we can does not mean we should and that a combination of abstinence and protection is never a bad idea.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
What is a Clomplier?
Clomplier : noun
A company which in its various guises is a client (cl), competitor (omp), and supplier (lier) to another company.
Usage: Microsoft is a client of WPP as we perform services for them, they are a competitor as AvenueA / Razorfish buys media and creates communication, they are a supplier as we are a customer of Atlas.
A company which in its various guises is a client (cl), competitor (omp), and supplier (lier) to another company.
Usage: Microsoft is a client of WPP as we perform services for them, they are a competitor as AvenueA / Razorfish buys media and creates communication, they are a supplier as we are a customer of Atlas.
Friday, November 9, 2007
That old Facebook thing again
I have run into a number of Facebook execs since my last post. They remain convinced that their integrity is not challenged by the model and that previous life changers such as opening up beyond the college community and the development of mini feed looked threatening but ended up being embraced.
My own view remains that this is very very different and creating the social shill on the back of very personal data creates a benefit to Facebook ludicrously out of proportion to the benefit to the community.
My own view remains that this is very very different and creating the social shill on the back of very personal data creates a benefit to Facebook ludicrously out of proportion to the benefit to the community.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Facebook Social Ads - Be careful what you wish for
Unimpeachably brilliant; the application of social networking principles to advertising. Let brands make friends, let the friends make more friends. Let people share what they buy with their friends who will buy more. Target your advertising against the declared interests of members.
What could be better unless......
There is no doubt that advertisers will rush into the space but there needs to be some really smart thinking about how to harvest the eggs without killing the Golden Goose.
Not everyone agrees, see the AdAge article here
What could be better unless......
- The clutter on everyone's home page becomes impenetrable
- If people who gave up information for the use of their friends maybe don't like it being used by advertisers
- If those who opt in to allow others to see their purchases of music, sneakers and cosmetics should just maybe slip up and buy a porn film that now everyone will know about
There is no doubt that advertisers will rush into the space but there needs to be some really smart thinking about how to harvest the eggs without killing the Golden Goose.
Not everyone agrees, see the AdAge article here
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Open Social - the new tipping point
The Google / MySpace Open Social announcement means that applications designed for Facebook and distributed across its network will soon, with tweaks, work across almost all social networking applications.
For advertisers this is both intriguing and scary. Intriguing because you get to attach commercial messaging to stuff you can be almost certain is being used; scary because the demands on relevance go sky high.
I suspect this will be a truly disruptive event as it is possible that applications will somehow become a really major component of the digital experience and require a really significant adjustment for marketers.
For advertisers this is both intriguing and scary. Intriguing because you get to attach commercial messaging to stuff you can be almost certain is being used; scary because the demands on relevance go sky high.
I suspect this will be a truly disruptive event as it is possible that applications will somehow become a really major component of the digital experience and require a really significant adjustment for marketers.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Future of Business Media Conference
Having bored a few people witless at this event someone made a film......... click to view it
The sweet smell of the pitch
Another day, another dollar. Pitch time in 40 minutes. I like this one because it connects the new and the old. This client has a multi-generation media franchise with a particular media segment which with the odd exception has abjectly failed in evolving in the digital world.
We are going to tell them how to make that happen and their prize will be clear leadership in the category achieved by shaping it to their will, to the benefit of the consumer, their media partners and themselves. How can that be a bad thing.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Are you worth $300 and if so for how long?
Microsoft's investment in Facebook (the Seinfeld of the digiverse) works out at $300 per user. This is an interesting number and is helpful in so far as it might inform us non-corporate finance types of where the real value lies. Everyone figures that the value will be derived from advertising revenue so let's do some sums.
Video ads in social networks are impossible to sell at more than a $10 CPM (cost per one thousand impressions) on that basis $300 will buy the advertiser the eyeballs (if not the attention) of 30,000 individuals so do the math...........
If there are 50 million users of Facebook it would (in theory at least) cost $500,000 to reach each of them once with video and MUCH less than that in other formats. The deal values the business at $15 billion so each user would have to be exposed to video advertising 30,000 times each to generate that number in cash.
The reality is that the real number as pricing trends downwards is probably 100,000 ad exposures per visitor ignoring all operating costs of the business. So if you take your community membership seriously you are kindly requested to watch at least one ad on Facebook every day for the next 274 years.
We can conclude from this that Mark Zuckerberg really is just as clever as he seems.
Video ads in social networks are impossible to sell at more than a $10 CPM (cost per one thousand impressions) on that basis $300 will buy the advertiser the eyeballs (if not the attention) of 30,000 individuals so do the math...........
If there are 50 million users of Facebook it would (in theory at least) cost $500,000 to reach each of them once with video and MUCH less than that in other formats. The deal values the business at $15 billion so each user would have to be exposed to video advertising 30,000 times each to generate that number in cash.
The reality is that the real number as pricing trends downwards is probably 100,000 ad exposures per visitor ignoring all operating costs of the business. So if you take your community membership seriously you are kindly requested to watch at least one ad on Facebook every day for the next 274 years.
We can conclude from this that Mark Zuckerberg really is just as clever as he seems.
What does winning mean?
One of our companies won a very big pitch today. The impact on the business is seismic; organisationally, financially and emotionally. It represents validation of the people and the years of preparing themselves to be able to deliver such an outcome.
For the CEO who was massively invested in the relationship, for his team that had sweat blood on part of the assignment over a period of years the outcome is particularly special and one truly hopes that they get to enjoy the thrill of victory.
For the rest of us who showed up to the dance we have a lot to learn and that will be truly humbling.
For the CEO who was massively invested in the relationship, for his team that had sweat blood on part of the assignment over a period of years the outcome is particularly special and one truly hopes that they get to enjoy the thrill of victory.
For the rest of us who showed up to the dance we have a lot to learn and that will be truly humbling.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
More from the Medialab
http://media.mit.edu If you had visited the Medialab at MIT a few years ago the experience would have had a 'Jetsons like' quality in that their work would have felt very far in the future. Now that the world operates on 'Google time' that is no longer the case.
This has interesting implications; as the time horizons for developing and distributing applications shorten and the number of developers grows because of the low price and free availability of processing power you can't help wondering if the market and the population at large has sufficiently developed coping mechanisms.
I suspect the answer is that the population has and the market has not. It is only businesses and marketers that require scale, the consumer only needs to know that something is available and that it has utility. It is no longer the case of 'I can't buy a fax machine until lots of other people have one', rather the interoperability and sociability of open based web systems mean that a single user can adopt something and gain utility from its usage in the knowledge that the internet protocol offers all the worm holes to the world that you could possibly need.
The consequence of this for advertisers is that we need to look for behaviors across platforms and technologies and achieve the heady notion of aggregated individualism. More on that later.
This has interesting implications; as the time horizons for developing and distributing applications shorten and the number of developers grows because of the low price and free availability of processing power you can't help wondering if the market and the population at large has sufficiently developed coping mechanisms.
I suspect the answer is that the population has and the market has not. It is only businesses and marketers that require scale, the consumer only needs to know that something is available and that it has utility. It is no longer the case of 'I can't buy a fax machine until lots of other people have one', rather the interoperability and sociability of open based web systems mean that a single user can adopt something and gain utility from its usage in the knowledge that the internet protocol offers all the worm holes to the world that you could possibly need.
The consequence of this for advertisers is that we need to look for behaviors across platforms and technologies and achieve the heady notion of aggregated individualism. More on that later.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Spatial and sociable
I have seen the future. I was lucky enough to spend a day at the MIT Medialab courtesy of Time Inc. The IQ per head is somewhat intimidating but I think they slowed down just enough to let us keep up. It's hard to draw a pithy conclusion other than to say there were some general themes that will effect the next generation of communications. I would summarize as follows:
Right now most web experiences are linear, two dimensional and limited in their ability to respond to our behavior through learning. Also most interfaces to things interactive tend to be mouse (in whatever form) to screen.
Much of the Medialab's work is in breaking these conventions; the development of intelligent fabrics and spaces; three dimensional and spatial representations of data and content and applications that learn from the inputs of users and the people with whom they associate.
You can't help feeling that they are working in the terrritory of 'nearly now' and that we need to apply the same kind of thinking to communication applications.
Right now most web experiences are linear, two dimensional and limited in their ability to respond to our behavior through learning. Also most interfaces to things interactive tend to be mouse (in whatever form) to screen.
Much of the Medialab's work is in breaking these conventions; the development of intelligent fabrics and spaces; three dimensional and spatial representations of data and content and applications that learn from the inputs of users and the people with whom they associate.
You can't help feeling that they are working in the terrritory of 'nearly now' and that we need to apply the same kind of thinking to communication applications.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Some people are on the pitch.......
They think it's all over.......it is now.
What a week. The work thing is done, the pitch delivered, the support team (bless them one and all) are clearing the detritus of six weeks effort, the pitch team just finding time to exhale and get on with the day job.
Now the wait; did we answer the question? Did we leave anything on the table? What did the other guys do?
Soon enough we will know, you can only hope the crieria for the decision match the content of the brief as we are not the world's best double guessers!
What a week. The work thing is done, the pitch delivered, the support team (bless them one and all) are clearing the detritus of six weeks effort, the pitch team just finding time to exhale and get on with the day job.
Now the wait; did we answer the question? Did we leave anything on the table? What did the other guys do?
Soon enough we will know, you can only hope the crieria for the decision match the content of the brief as we are not the world's best double guessers!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Boo hoo Yahoo?
Yahoo! announced their earnings yesterday and after a few grubby quarters gave the Street some news it liked. Apparently Sue Decker laughed which she must have enjoyed.
This could be a breakthrough moment for Yahoo! which until now has really been an old media company relying on monetizing display ad inventory for its earnings. Now it looks like it wants to be a new media company:
This could be a breakthrough moment for Yahoo! which until now has really been an old media company relying on monetizing display ad inventory for its earnings. Now it looks like it wants to be a new media company:
- creating inventory through collaboration and open platforms rather than publishing
- leveraging search as a behavior rather than as an excuse for publishing a directory
- recognizing the value of the interconnected data it collects
Given that the industry would never have developed at the speed it has without Yahoo! we can only wish them well.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The advertising contract
Advertising involves a largely covert contract between consumer and publisher. The former allows the latter to intersperse its content with advertising so that the content is consumed free. This applies in full to all non subscription TV and in part to every magazine and newspaper. The online ad model is identical and as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal take away their subscription access the model online is becoming as pure as TV.
TV's problem of course is ad avoidance, the dreaded DVR or even the humble remote mean that the consumer is welching on his end of the contract and the advertisers are not happy.
For a sniff of the future take a look at the full episode player on ABC.COM. Quite apart from the unimaginable beauty of the interface (created by friends of mine!!) and the riotous quality of Move Networks Player the contract is both overt and exquisite. You get a little painless ad break at the beginning and that's it; unless you choose to fast forward in which case you get a maximum of three thirty second ad breaks in the hour. Cutely a corner counter tells you just how much longer you have to endure unless you choose to spend a second or an age interacting with the ad itself and all that surrounds it before resuming viewing.
This is good on three accounts; the viewer gets limited amounts of advertising but no deluge, the advertisers get some exclusivity and the opportunity for real engagement, the media owner gets to sell a premium product for good money.
All good.
TV's problem of course is ad avoidance, the dreaded DVR or even the humble remote mean that the consumer is welching on his end of the contract and the advertisers are not happy.
For a sniff of the future take a look at the full episode player on ABC.COM. Quite apart from the unimaginable beauty of the interface (created by friends of mine!!) and the riotous quality of Move Networks Player the contract is both overt and exquisite. You get a little painless ad break at the beginning and that's it; unless you choose to fast forward in which case you get a maximum of three thirty second ad breaks in the hour. Cutely a corner counter tells you just how much longer you have to endure unless you choose to spend a second or an age interacting with the ad itself and all that surrounds it before resuming viewing.
This is good on three accounts; the viewer gets limited amounts of advertising but no deluge, the advertisers get some exclusivity and the opportunity for real engagement, the media owner gets to sell a premium product for good money.
All good.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Social networking - playing the long game
How much of marketing is focused on what people might or should think five years from now? Not a whole lot I suspect as corporations focus on the next quarter and zero in on the last mile, the moment of truth and the shopper insights that inform those strategies. The rise of online marketing, the extraordinary progress of search and newer and quicker optimization tools merely fuels the thirst for now and the ability to squeeze the last drops out of the wet rag sometimes at the expense of the search for new supplies of water.
Social networks are a challenge for marketers (outside the entertainment sector) who are frustrated by a lack of 'RESULTS RIGHT NOW' outcomes compounded by a prevailing view that they are somehow important nonetheless.
Maybe the real answer lies in using the newest of all communication environments to play a much longer game and work to influence opinion among people who will be most economically active in the future.
So far we can speculate about about a few things that do and do not work. Collaborative tools are good, applications that let people do stuff are good; ads are not so good. So when you think about about a brand, a category or a business what applications might you create and share that will involve communities and encourage them to co-develop with you and consequently build a positive relationship that you might cash in some time in the future.
Social networks are a challenge for marketers (outside the entertainment sector) who are frustrated by a lack of 'RESULTS RIGHT NOW' outcomes compounded by a prevailing view that they are somehow important nonetheless.
Maybe the real answer lies in using the newest of all communication environments to play a much longer game and work to influence opinion among people who will be most economically active in the future.
So far we can speculate about about a few things that do and do not work. Collaborative tools are good, applications that let people do stuff are good; ads are not so good. So when you think about about a brand, a category or a business what applications might you create and share that will involve communities and encourage them to co-develop with you and consequently build a positive relationship that you might cash in some time in the future.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
A flat pitch
Agency pitches are remarkable things. Extraordinary resources are applied to deliver choreographed presentations that allow the people involved to stand out and achieve some lingering memory in the minds of the clients concerned.
There are relatively few binary measures in the process that allow the client to see if A is definitively better than B. I like to think (naively) that the process works something like this:
There are relatively few binary measures in the process that allow the client to see if A is definitively better than B. I like to think (naively) that the process works something like this:
- Select a short list. Dead easy There are 6 companies on the planet who can do the job, 3 of them work for competitors. The short list = 3.
- Give each agency 100 credits.
- Set them a series of tasks; 100 pages of detailed questions, a couple of 'chemistry meetings', a few dozen follow up questions, two or three follow up meetings, a social occasion, a financial proposal and assorted other bits inclding the all singing all dancing final.
- Watch the agencies lose points throughout the process by not quite hitting it out of the park each and every time.
- The agency still standing and with most points left wins.
This starts to sound like the World Series of Poker and it should. Similar combinations of skill, luck, oppostion weakness, and endurance are at play and in the end you count the chips.
This won't change in a hurry so no great insight there but there are three requests that seem reasonable.
- Allocate allotted time for the process and pay for that time for no other reason than the agency has other clients (just like you) to serve and they need to fund that resource
- Be nice and be decisive. If someone is losing points quickly push them out of the process quickly. No one wants to be the wounded animal dragging out its demise.
- Finally be as clear as you can about the basis of the final decision, Is our office in Casablanca really important or is there (just maybe) something that matters more.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
What did you do at the office today?
The CEO of Ford came to talk to us (100 colleagues) on Friday. First question...how did he have the time? If management is the art of simplification and alignment around goals they have found their guy. He is clearly totally committed to the task in hand and you rather get the feeling that if he can't do it then nobody can. The reason why he visited with us was, I think, to get a smell of belief. I hope he did.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Keeping your head above water
Data is intimidating; every record of every customer, of every transaction. Web sites are intimidating; the fluffy consumer front end all the way to the bowels of commerce at the other. Maybe it's this sense of enormity that drives people to rigid solutions and rules, to templates and formats and a world run by the keepers of the data and stewards of the web site rather than by the marketers who have to get some kind of action out of the consumer.
So perhaps the answer lies in thinking about parcels of data that float above or to the side of the behemoth. Parcels that represent samples that can me stimulated and measured and used as a proxy for the whole thing.
On the web side think of clouds that sit between the traffic drivers of search and online ads and that big 'ole web site; an airlock or safe house in which we can play, get to know and interact with our customers before passing them safely and accurately to their destination. Think of it is a really terrific call center or concierge service that understands what you want and the best way to get it to you.
So perhaps the answer lies in thinking about parcels of data that float above or to the side of the behemoth. Parcels that represent samples that can me stimulated and measured and used as a proxy for the whole thing.
On the web side think of clouds that sit between the traffic drivers of search and online ads and that big 'ole web site; an airlock or safe house in which we can play, get to know and interact with our customers before passing them safely and accurately to their destination. Think of it is a really terrific call center or concierge service that understands what you want and the best way to get it to you.
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